Urban Transit App Citymapper Raises $10 Million Series A Round

Skift Take

With Google’s strong transit functions built in its maps and Apple’s forthcoming integration of both HopStop and Embark, Citymapper will need to distinguish itself to overcome user inertia.

— Jason Clampet

Ride-sharing startups may be red hot, but what about public transportation? And what about good, old-fashioned walking?

Urban transportation tracker Citymapper just racked up a fresh $10 million to keep helping people take advantage of public transit, sidewalks, and everything in between. Balderton Capital led the round — Connect Ventures, Index Ventures, Greylock Partners, and a host of angels also chipped in.

Citymapper got its start with bus riders and eventually evolved into the all-encompassing transport app that it is today. Today, its apps provide real-time information about public transit, road disruptions, weather details, and anything else urban travelers could need to make it from point A to point B.

“We believe cities are complicated. And your mobile should save you from the everyday challenges of living in them,” the company says on its website.

“We’re motivated by solving hard fundamental everyday problems that improve the quality of people’s lives. We like simplifying complexity, reinventing user experience, working with data, shipping fast, and humanizing a serious space.”

In a blog post, Balderton Capital partner Bernard Liautaud commented that crowdsourcing (Waze-style) could be in Citymapper’s future.

“We also see a major opportunity in crowdsourcing data to provide real-time information on disruptions and journey times, for which the company already receives a stack of feedback from its users every day,” he said.

Other transit apps, such as Moovit and Apple-owned HopStop, have already started to leverage crowdsourcing, showing that the idea has legs.